Sworded Tales

When I’m not dipping into sword & sorcery, you will find my writing laced with spandex and superpowers.  I grew up on comic books as well, long before they exploded into the multi-branching, crossover, graphic novel genre they are today.  I fondly remember subscriptions and getting my comics in the mail.  Those protective brown sleeves were a child’s delight peeking from the mailbox, and woe be to any postman who delivered one damaged!

A lot of comics came into our home, and many of them are still sequestered safely in my attic.  The Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, Spider Man, Thor and the X-Men were but a few of the titles that painted bold splashes of color across my youth.  As you can see, we were a Marvel household.  DC, not so much.  While enjoyable enough adventures, my brother and I shared those Marvel titles, common ground within our different approaches to growing up.

The comics my younger self sought out as personal preference were among those less traveled, Moon Knight, ROM, Warlord and the like.  The two primary characters I enjoyed were Conan and his line of comics, Savage Sword of Conan, Conan the Barbarian & King Conan/Conan the King (fantasy, go figure), and then there was my number one guy, Iron Fist.  The former taught me about honor and bloodshed and boobs and the latter about survival and spiritual balance and ninjas.  Danny Rand, a.k.a. Iron Fist, could do no wrong, and I have tremendous, musty memories of scouring comic book shops and flea markets for any missing issues for my collection.

As my tastes developed, I gravitated toward the likes of Ghost Rider, The Punisher and Wolverine, those figures that embodied vigilantism more than classic superheroic behavior.  Teenage rebellion at its finest it was!  My initial plunge into superheroic roleplaying was molded after these questionable characters who walked a fine line with the law, and I was glad to lance that particular boil in my twenties.

While the influence of all of these elements can be found throughout my creative forays, they ebb and flow with the tides of emotion and the temperance of age.  There will be vengeance and justice.  There will be honor and deception.  There will be fantasy, and there will be spandex.  Through the decades and all the multitude of comics though, I find myself always coming back to Iron Fist.

He is simply the shit.

Long minutes dragged on in silence before Kevlin realized that since he had been staring at the petite woman before him, he had not felt any kind of emotion al all, not from him and not from her.  His eyes widened in wonder as an empty serenity flowed through him.  Never before had he felt so clear headed.  His thoughts were more focused and rational than he could ever remember.

In the mere span of heartbeats that this newfound data raced through Kevlin’s mind, the woman raised one delicate fist and held it out toward him.  Kevlin’s attention focused on her outstretched hand, but the young boy did not take what meaning she intended.  Then her fist suddenly opened, palm facing upward and slender fingers straining down toward the floor.  A flood of emotions hit the padawan with such force that Kevlin was utterly blinded for a moment. Continue reading

I killed 5.8 billion people.  No small feat to be sure, and the guilt plays hell on your psyche.  Then I was given the opportunity to save them, and I took it.  I was from the future, until I made the choice to travel back in time.  My name is, was, Levi Deveron, but most folks now simply know me as Slipstream.  This is my story. Continue reading

Gerard leapt over the fallen log with a nimble plant of one gloved hand, his lean form arcing through the moist morning fog.  His bare feet absorbed a great deal of the impact as they pattered to the mossy earth in rapid succession.  The mists consumed the remainder of his passage, clamping down on the noises with a choking undulation.  Even Gerard’s labored breathing was lost amidst the gray waste that floated around him.  The thrumming in his ears was paramount.  That rhythmic hammering of his nectarine sized heart, rapid firing in his chest.

The sweat soaked Halfling wasn’t sure how long he had been running.  The first day was clear enough at the time, but the ceaseless pursuit over the overgrown barrens was dissolving his sense of time and place.  The perpetual silver hue and the lack of any disturbance in the stagnant weather made travel in the darklands difficult under the best of circumstances.  That is, after all, the task for which he was trained.  This mindless fleeing, a thin shadow blurring through the bland backdrop, was an altogether different matter.  Many seasoned travelers had navigated the dead zone perimeter and had wandered into their final nightmare.

Gerard wasn’t about to join them.

Continue reading

The condominium felt empty to Calico despite the presence of the seed mimic somewhere close by.  Long hours had passed since the man who he had come to see had made the quiet leap from the world of the living to the realm of the eternally stiff.  The haunted blackness of night was just beginning to show signs of the bleak gray of first dawn, little more than a bleeding of sour light around the fringes of the horizon.  The futile illumination was enough to make the difference though. Continue reading

DMG Original Cover (1979)

I will always return to sword & sorcery.

Ever since cracking that first edition of D&D and rolling up some hack-and-slash monstrosity, I was consumed.  Don’t get me wrong.  I didn’t realize that my fate had been sealed just yet.  This was only the first wave of the fantasy assault which would shape me.

So, I wax colored polyhedral dice and dabbled with power gaming for a brief time.  Beholders feared me.  Illithid feared me.  Even Demogorgon himself was no match for my pre-teen omnipotence.  Then, I set this novel new game aside for a time and followed the fickle fancy of youth elsewhere.  A decade would pass before I would find my way back to the allure of tabletop roleplaying.

My older brother had just finished reading The Sword of Shannara (1977) by Terry Brooks.  His recommendation and my own budding interest in fiction beyond comic books were enough encouragement to try tackling this tome.  With over 700 pages!  An abridged Webster’s seemed less daunting.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of journeying with Shea, Menion, Allanon and the bunch, I envy you the opportunity to do so.  Brooks has an enchanting ability to weave multiple story lines together with nail biting chapter closures.  The pages fly by.  So much so, that he is a go to author for me to this day.  Some of the blame is his, but not all.

Lord of the Rings (1978)

The animated version of The Lord of the Rings (1978) certainly played its role.  I can see so many  of those vintage images with poignant clarity,  Boromir’s death scene, the battle with the Balrog and the haunting Ringwraiths.  I still sing this little ditty more often than I care to admit.

Are you singing it now too?  You’re welcome.

The final formative element to this love affair was the computer game Wizardry (1981).  I was fortunate enough to have access to potent technology of the era, and I of course chose to spend countless hours dungeon crawling and mapping.  Oh my god the mapping!  Those of you who have crawled this path with me will remember the graph paper with a shadowy fondness.  I still dream of it from time to time.  Curse you Sir-Tech.

There are other elements to my gamer inside, comics and horror and sci-fi and holocaust and growing up in the arcade generation.  Many of which I will explore here with fervor.  Know this though, whether I dabble in a zombie apocalypse or digress into a Magic the Gathering montage, my wanderings will always find their way back to the beginning, to sword & sorcery.

That’s the magic of first love.  That’s the heart of Sworded Tales.

Amethyst stood on the reedy bank of Lake Ire looking across the stagnant waters.  Her revenant orange eyes were cast to the far shores, gleaning the minute details from the harsh terrain all around her.  Her glum countenance was lost in the recent past, swimming along the lines of memory which lead her to this place.  Her final destination. Continue reading

Our unique muse pulls inspiration from equally singular perception.  Never dismiss your own viewpoint as anything less than the source of information it represents.  No one perceives the world as you do, and never grant anyone the power to disregard what hearkens to your senses.

Below are five different perceptions of the same scene.  Who is to say which is the most poignant?

Sisters of the Blade

Dakota

I saw the rage burning in Sue’s eyes long before tonight.  All of us had suffered with the Puño investigation, and the weeks of pursuit had added grueling hours onto already frayed nerves.  I had asked a few of the sisters to commiserate with Sue as well, probing for the problem I could smell boiling under the surface.  No true resolution was reached, but I had hoped the therapy would soften the edges of her anger.

Now this.  I tried to reach Puño before her, but she was always one of the quickest in our tactical simulations. Continue reading

The ring of truth cannot be denied.  Don’t be deception’s bitch.  Speak what’s on your mind and in your heart.

Immortal Ends

“Gimme back my arm,” Grove said in listless tones.

“I’m ot un wiss it et,” Mincer mumbled around a mouthful of mocha flesh.

Grove stared at the quadruped with flat eyes.  The ragged stump of his left shoulder didn’t seem to phase the man much. Continue reading

Gretchen quirked an eyebrow at Donny as he stood there smiling with his hammer.  He had sprinted over from next door a few minutes earlier, all pasty skin and giant mop of platinum blond hair.

“Cap busting?” Gretchen asked, “You know I don’t like guns.”

“Right, right, I got that,” Donny said, “You see any guns?”  He raised his arms and spun.

Gretchen stepped back, avoiding the hammer claw arcing her way at throat height.  Her face dissolved into a frown. Continue reading